


Practice

by pirategirljack



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, SO MUCH FLUFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 05:14:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4551987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirategirljack/pseuds/pirategirljack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walter has another case that requires him to seduce someone and he's still really bad at it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practice

**Author's Note:**

> I miss these nerds.

“Um. Paige?”

Paige looked up to see Walter doing that thing where he tries to look sure of himself, diffident even, like whatever he’s saying doesn’t matter when it really does a lot. A little light lit in her ribcage at the way he was looking at her sideways.

She put her pen down, and closed the file she’d been filling out. It was exhausting, being the one to handle all the paperwork, and she was happy for a distraction. 

“What’s going on?”

“Cabe just briefed me on a new case, a--delicate one. I’m the only one who can handle the technical details. But…”

He was so uncomfortable. And she’d seen that particular kind of discomfort before. “There’s a girl involved.” Why did that thought make her squirm inside?

“There’s a girl involved,” he confirmed, his face twisting up. His discomfort shouldn’t be so adorable, but it was. “I was thinking--um, well, you were so good about helping me before, about coaching me so I’d know what to do. I was--I was hoping you could coach me again?”

That light in her chest got brighter. It loosened up her shoulders and made her feel a little wobbly--but also braver. “Sure.”

Walter led her up to his loft in the most matter-of-fact way he was capable of, as if he was showing her exactly where the leak in the roof she had to handle was or something. But when they were alone where he lived, the tone changed. There wasn’t a baffled Sylvester over in the sitting area this time, there was only them.

“Where should we begin?” he asked, his voice low, just short of tentative, and his dark eyes watchful of every move she made. She hoped she wasn’t blushing as much as she felt like she was.

“Okay. Pretend I’m--what’s the girl’s name?”

“Kristina.”

“Pretend I’m Kristina. In a nice dress, at a nice party.”

“You’re taller than she is. And darker. And--prettier.”

Walter O’Brian thinks I’m pretty, her inner voice said. “That’s why you have to pretend. So I’m her, small and light and at a party. Maybe you ask her to dance.”

“I’m not a good dancer,” he said, but he shifted into movement anyway, stepping forward and holding out a hand and bowing a little. A performance--the change in movement was too sudden and different to be anything else, and she thought maybe he’d been watching videos or something to get it right--but it was a good performance, and it worked. She slipped her hand into his, and he drew her in close.

Walter was pretending she was this other girl, so he kept space between them, and kept his hand high on her waist. But his eyes were deep and soft, and she didn’t think that’d be for this girl he hadn’t met yet. And that made her bold.

“So you’re dancing. You’ve gone through a few dances, and now they’re playing the really romantic songs…”

“I don’t know what romantic is.” It was a statement, but there was another layer there. 

“Sure you do.”

“No. I don’t. I never had. Romance depends on emotion--and emotional connection, and--and an awareness of what the object of the romance is feeling, how they’re reacting. I’m not...good at that.” He paused, and he looked at her very closely. They’d drifted closer together somewhere along the line, and his hand was lower on her back, his arm looped closer around her. And the way he looked at her was telling her all sorts of things about how he wanted to know these things, but they still made no sense to him. “I’ve never been good with that. I never saw the point.” 

But that sentence didn’t quite end, and it implied a sense of until now that made her knees wobble.

“So--so you do know what romance is. You’ve just maybe never really felt it.” Their chests were almost touching. She looped her arm around his neck, and her hand felt so natural on the back of his neck that it scared her a little. “But you’re a good actor. I’ve seen you do it. You can pretend.”

“Pretend she’s not a vapid heiress?”

“She’s probably more than that anyway. You don’t even know her.” She was chiding him...but she was also becoming very distracted. They were silent for a few moments, and he spun her around, then drew her back, closer than ever. 

“So we’ve danced. I’ve discovered that she’s fascinating.” His tone implied that he thought that was unlikely. “What comes next?”

“Seduction?” Her voice cracked on that word, came out half in a whisper. She covered it by ducking her head, but that meant she was almost laying her cheek on his shoulder, and they were hardly even swaying anymore.

“Like this?” he almost purred, and that would have been enough, but he brushed his lips over her neck, nuzzled into the hollow behind her ear. It was tentative, exploratory, but it was also warm and sweet and made her feel like her bones were being replaced with water, one by one.

And that made her panic. This was supposed to be a simulation, a practice run. Last time, she’d been able to switch it off when he’d proven he knew what he was doing well enough to pass--but this time--

This time, it was working too well. Months had passed since that last practice run, and a lot of emotionally charged events. And a late night kiss she was almost sure he didn’t remember. 

But she did.

She pulled back, and he dropped his arms instantly.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No! No, you did everything right. Too right. That’s the problem.” She put a few steps of distance between them, turned her back and covered her face in an attempt to get control of herself. She wished she’d worn a longer skirt, or a shirt with sleeves, so there’d be more layers between his hands and her skin.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re supposed to be seducing her, not me,” she said, still not looking at him. This was an act. It was a simulation and she had fallen in like a first date. Stupid, Paige, silly and amateurish and stupid. 

Nothing had changed. All these months since he’d begged to see her before he died, since she’d whispered that she was glad he hadn’t, and nothing had changed and here she was discovering that she wasn’t as over it as she thought.

His hand landed on her shoulder at the same moment his voice came, low and close, almost a whisper, “Would it be so bad if it was you?”

She didn’t want to turn, but it was like they were a pair of magnets flipping to their natural sides. His arms looped around her, his hands sliding down her back as her hands settled on his chest.

“Would it be bad?”

“No,” she said. He was so close. So warm. She realized she’d built a wall inside herself, and that it was crumbling now. 

Walter O’Brian looked at her like she was a perfectly balanced equation, like a new invention that worked better than expected. And then, tentatively, like he’d never done it before, he moved one hand and pushed her hair back from her face. He traced the outline of her cheek. “You make no sense to me,” he said. “But it’s the way looking at the universe through a telescope makes no sense. Like it’s all there and I just don’t know how to read the rules.”

“There aren’t any rules,” she whispered. “People don’t have manuals.”

He frowned, a line forming between his brows. “That’s the problem. There are rules, they just aren’t codified. If I kissed you in the middle of a case because you’d said something brilliant or narrowly escaped death, that would be inappropriate. But if I did it now, alone--but you’re technically an employee, so it’s inappropriate again--but we’re also a team, you’re my partner, you make the world make sense…” He sighed, and brushed his thumb over her lip.

“Do you want to kiss me?”

“Almost all the time.”

“Almost?”

He smiled, just a little. “Sometimes I’m trying not to get killed.”

That warmth in her chest flared like a campfire someone had thrown a whole new bundle of kindling on. “I almost always want to kiss you, too.”

This time it was Walter’s turn to pull away--but he only drew back far enough to see her whole face at once. “You never said.”

“People don’t usually go around saying ‘I’d really like to kiss you right now’. It’s more of an implied thing.”

“I don’t get implications very often.”

“You can kiss me now, if you like?”

And he smiled, and closed the space between them. He cupped her cheek in his strong engineer’s hand, and he bent toward her--and hesitated. So she laughed and closed the gap.

As first kisses go, it was a good one, interspersed with giggles and punctuated by wondering looks. And it went on for a long time. 

“Toby was right,” she said. “You are good at this.”

A new voice broke in from the direction of the stairs. “Toby is frequently right when it comes to matters of the heart, but right now he’s here to tell you that Cabe’s here with a new file. Something’s changed since this morning.”

Paige jumped away from Walter and folded her hands behind her back like a schoolgirl caught necking behind the bikerack, and saw Toby grinning from ear to ear. 

“Don’t say a word,” Walter said. 

“Moi?” Toby answered, laying his hand over his heart like a diva from a 40s melodrama. “Say something? Whatever would I say?”

“Toby--”

“Would I say that it’s about damned time you guys acted on your frustratingly obvious attraction for each other? That I’d just won about three hundred dollars on the office pool? That when the two of you get married I’d better be the best man or at least the first groomsman if Sly is the best man? Far be it from me!”

Paige couldn’t help it. Walter was scowling so hard, and Toby was on a roll as he started backing away from him down the steps. She laughed. And the sound of it evaporated the glowering darkness on Walter’s face. 

“You’re not mad?”

“No. Not even a little.”

Walter smiled, just a little, and held out an arm to indicate that they had somewhere to be. “Let’s see what Cabe has to say, then.” And when she passed him to take the stairs first, his hand settled, almost shyly, on her back, and she thought this was the best day she’d had in months.


End file.
